Assisted Living: A Novel Read Online Free

trendsetters, spoilsports, and livingfossils … princes of peace, masks of death, and objects of ridicule … sons-in-law, brothers-in-law, and miraclerabbis … There was Gobineau, Klages, and Evola … Ortega y Gasset, Jünger, and Pound … trailblazers, crackwhores, and bigtalkers … conjurers, foresters, and monsignors … matroses, monks, and miscreants … dockworkers, stevedores, and logjammers … torpedoes, duds, and moneygrubbers … captainsofindustry, electoralprinces, and royalpains … jugglers, inkslingers, and gladiators … loosecannons, cockmakers, and coppersmiths … friseurs, servitors, and masseurs … Rafael, Rembrandt, and Rops … Scorsese, Greenaway, and Kurosawa … rollingstones, bootleggers, and hobbyists … staggeringdrunks, flounderingfish, and eightysixedclerks … And many many more …
    Grandpa took a fistful of snow to cool his burning mouth.
    —Back then it was no big thing to be simple and chaste … or dull and brooding, if that’s how you wanted it …
    —Must’ve been nice …
    —Nothing doing … we trusted our luckystars … saw to ourselves … we were raciallypure and cleanshaven all over … we propagated with style and taste … slow and steady wins the race … We men knew how to enjoy each other … liked being together … there weren’t too many of us … five thousand at most …
    Grandpa swallowed, he was having a hard time going on.
    —But evil was brewing … something was coming … something that would destroy our world forever …
    —Was it women?
    —It was women! The inferior race! three openings! Snakeless crotches! … Darkness covered the land … troubling rumors reached us from the south, but no one believed them, at least not at first … They started down in Ume … something about longhaired creatures making land … spinning the heads of tried and true buttfuckers everywhere … of course, everyone thought the rumors were just cockandbull … balderdash … But as we were to find out, those stories held a terrible, grim reality …
    His voice sunk even more.
    —They spread like the plague … like gangrene … before long they’d reached the vicinity of Vindeln … between Trollberget and Häggnäs … they were sly … didn’t come up the coast via Bygdeå, Ånäset, and Lövånger … the shriekingbuggers there should’ve finished them off! But those inlandfüddies were too slow with the whip … we were used to having things our own way, no regular mealtimes … letting it all hang out … minding our own business … no curfews, no responsibilities … just whim and will and almighty nature … God in heaven, if only the coastguard had blown them out of the water! before it was too late … They spread to Pompej and Sirapsbacken … lamias and harpies had nothing on them … they got beneath our skin with gooeyeyedloveydoveyness … they made their way to Gorkuträsk … Lossmen … the picture was becoming clearer … stumpylegged, narrowshouldered, steatopygic monsters with repulsively swollen breasts … coldblooded and heartless as vipers … they’d swoon on command if they didn’t get their way … we tore at our hair! went about in a daze! pinched ourselves hard! How could respectable barbarians soil their cocks with that?!
    Grandpa trembled with the effort his story was taking … The woods brooded over his dark saga, the eternal struggle between evil and good.
    —One word, the foulest word there ever was, began to make the rounds: Cunt … they had cunts, people said, like little furry animals, smoother and softer than anuses, not as heathenishly narrow … All who tried it were sold … Amfooorrrtasss!!! That’s what it was, all right, the Wound, the gaping, bloody, festering sore that wouldn’t close … They used cunts to take Norrland from us! Eyes full of bittersweet treachery, tongues agile as squirrels … Unlucky love walked among us, burning and